5 tips help you recover deserved pay.

Collecting money from patients, especially during a recession, can be challenging. If your front desk is responsible for collecting copays and sometimes old balances, its success or failure has a dramatic impact on the practice’s bottom line.

Check out five ways you can improve your front desk collection efforts:

1. When calling to remind patients about their visit date, also remind them of their co-pay amount and any old balances so they come prepared to pay at the visit.

2. When a patient complains about paying a bill, send her to a manager so the bill can be reviewed and explained.

3. Most practice management software will allow front desk staff to view outstanding balances. Your front desk staff can politely remind the patient that there is a balance and say something like, “How would you like to pay your bill today?” Assume that the patient is planning to pay.

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Reading 44373’s code descriptor is key to getting your G Tube claim right.

Question: The gastroenterologist goes to the hospital to treat a patient that had recently been admitted because his gastrojejunostomy tube had migrated to his stomach. After performing a problem focused interval history and exam, the gastroenterologist decides to perform an EGD to reposition the tube. I cannot find a code for repositioning a G tube; how should I code this scenario?

Answer: Judging by your encounter description, the patient’s percutaneous jejunostomy tube (J tube) slipped and became a percutaneous gastrostomy tube (G tube). On the claim, report the following:

• 44373 (Small intestinal endoscopy, enteroscopy beyond second portion of duodenum, not including ileum; with conversion of percutaneousgastrostomy tube to a percutaneous jejunostomy tube) for the EGD;

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Here are the requirements the exam must meet, according to Medicare.

If your PET claim meets certain requirements, you don’t need to append modifier Q0 (Investigational clinical service provided in a clinical research study that is in an approved clinical research study), according to MLN Matters article MM6753.

Effective for dates of service on or after Nov. 10, 2009, Medicare has an updated national coverage determination (NCD) for cervical cancer FDG PET imaging. Medicare has ended the coverage with evidence development (CED) requirements for initial staging of initial treatment.

Medicare will cover one FDG PET for cervical cancer. That one exam must meet specific requirements:

• The exam must be for staging (not initial diagnosis).
• The patient must have biopsy proven cervical cancer.
• The treating physician must need the study to determine the tumor’s location, extent, or both for one of the following therapeutic purposes related to initial treatment strategy:

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Verify co-pay early to save time, money

Question: A patient came to our office for a routine exam with the same insurance card she’s had for years. We charged her the standard copay of record. Then I found out her employer changed the terms of the insurance, so the copay she paid was short by $20. What went wrong?

Answer: You might easily assume that when a patient has the same insurance company, the copay is the same as it has always been. But unless you check first, you won’t know the patient’s coverage has changed until after the fact.

Best practice …